Psychology 2The Founding Fathers of Psychology Psychology is one of the newest sciences and was not even considered a formal discipline until the late 19thcentury. However, psychology’s roots actually reach as far back as 600 BC. Philosophers and scholars have been questioning the exact nature of the mind for centuries. Therefore to truly understand how the science of psychology came to be, you will have to know about the founding fathers, the philosophers, scientist and physicians that are responsible for building the foundation for which the psychology of today stands. The great philosophers Socrates, Plato and Aristotle wrote about pain, knowledge, beauty, desire, free will, motivation, rationality, common sense, memory and the subjective nature of perception. They were also the first to theorize about whether or not human traits are innate (in born) or whether or not they were developed through personal experience. It was these early thinkers that tried to find the answers too many psychological questions. Such as, are people naturally good? How can people achieve happiness? What motivates or drives people? Is it natural for people to be social beings? Socrates and Plato were also the first to actually consider the true cause of mental illness. Many old world societies believed that mental illness was the product of something supernatural, they believed that someone with a mental illness was either possessed by evil spirits or that they had somehow angered the Gods and that was there punishment. Socrates and Plato began to focus on a psychological cause for mental illnesses. For example, Plato believed that insanity was the result of a person whose intellectual psyche has become overwhelmed by their irrational animal-like psyche (Tredennick, 1995).

Psychology 3One of the scientists that had a big impact on how people viewed mental illness was the Greek physician Hippocrates. He believed that mental illness actually had a natural cause, such as an imbalance in bodily fluids. To be more specific he felt that it was caused by an imbalance in either one or more of four bodily fluids, phlegm, blood, yellow bile and black bile. He was the first to develop a classification system for mental disorders, which included mania, depression, and paranoia. Hippocrates is also solely responsible for the Hippocratic Oath, an oath that is still taken today by every physician entering the medical field (Porter, 1994). Many other men and women contributed to the birth of modern psychology, men such as mathematician and philosopher Rene Descartes who believed that the body and the mind were separate. He considered the body a physical being, where as the mind was of a spiritual nature, and believed that the two interacted only through the pineal gland which can be found at the base of the brain. This became the doctrine known as dualism, and dualism states that the body is

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